MENASHA – Faced with $6.5 million in budget reductions, leaders and staff members at University of Wisconsin Colleges — including the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley — searched for answers Monday at a town hall meeting.

Chancellor Cathy Sandeen cleared up some rumors about the impending budget reductions and said the Budget Planning Task Force developed its recommendations so the two-year colleges are prepared if the cuts move forward.

“It would be irresponsible to put our head in the sand and say, ‘We do not need to worry about this.’ We do need to think about it, and we do need to plan,” Sandeen said.

However, she would not comment on the implementation process and reiterated that decisions about who would be laid off have not been made.

Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget would cut UW System funding by more than $300 million over the next two years.

Rumors addressed

More than 40 people attended the hour-long video telecast town hall meeting at UWFox. Representatives from each of the 13 two-year colleges could submit questions through email or ask Sandeen directly over the video feed.

Sandeen will notify the colleges about her final recommendations once the Joint Finance Committee sends the budget to the Legislature. She expects that to happen in two to three weeks, she said.

Changes would go into effect on July 1, but it would take anywhere from two to five months to develop strategies for implementation, she said. The cuts will not result in any campus closures.

Sandeen said the colleges are considering early retirement options for staff members, as well.

Six-region model

The UW Colleges Budget Planning Task Force released its recommendations to campuses last week. The proposed changes would restructure the system into either four or six regions.

The reductions would specifically target “back-office transaction-based processes which are currently being duplicated” and the consolidation — or regionalization — of management positions.

Currently each college is led by a dean. The change would have one dean in charge of all the campuses for a specific region. In the six-region model, nearly 77 full-time equivalent positions would be lost, resulting in $5.1 million in savings.

Additional savings would be found by reducing construction support, the 2015 base wage and fringe benefit liability, the recommendation said.

The total estimated cost savings for the six-region model are $5.3 million. Officials would have to make more than $1.1 million in additional cuts to meet the $6.5 million budget reduction.

Four-region model

The four-region model would reduce staff by nearly 89 full-time equivalent positions, resulting in more than $6 million in savings. That would leave the colleges to make only $426,400 in additional cuts, the proposal said.

Marc Sackman, an associate professor of music at UWFox, was most concerned about the proposed consolidation of academic departments. It would result in a loss of 0.7 full-time equivalent positions and $100,000 in savings.

Sackman said the departments are worth the cost.

“I think they’re undervalued in the colleges because people don’t understand how great it is to have colleagues who actually know what you do,” he said. “It’s already hard enough to work in this place with the salaries so bad, and we work so hard and we get so little recognition, so to not have department support would really be detrimental.”

Rep. Romaine Quinn, R-Rice Lake, is working on an amendment that would shield the UW Colleges from the budget reduction. Quinn, who attended UW-Barron County before transferring to a four-year institution, urged everyone to contact their lawmakers.